I was kidnaped the other day.

Okay so “kidnapped” is a little strong. Perhaps a better description would be that I was hijacked while working on a task.  Revelry suddenly swooped in and tugged playfully at my responsibility of tending to toilsome home improvement efforts. 

I had been working at tearing out a rotting deck section that serves as the entry area to our lower door. As I piled up short sections of salvaged 2 x 6 boards that were still sound, I realized I had a place for them.

Across the river from us, on Native Settlement Land, is an old trail that runs atop the river bluff. It’s a sinuous footpath that runs for at least two miles. In the winter the path becomes a ski trail that requires snowshoeing to pack it down before you can get a decent stride that becomes a cross country ski trail in the winter. During snow-free months it has become a favorite single-track mountain bike trail. The trail is known by a few people and the only time I have ever seen anyone was a neighbor skiing there in the winter.

Two years ago, wildlife researchers, studying riparian wildlife movements along the river placed a game trail camera along the trail.The camera’s shutter is activated by a motion detector so as critters pass they unknowingly shoot self-portraits of themselves. Not only did the biologists get photos of us hiking by but they had images of bear, moose, fox, a lynx and porcupine. In the winter, we have seen caribou here as well. Obviously it’s a popular trail.

For three consecutive days last week I hopped on my silver bush pony, my Trek “twenty-niner” (29 inch wheels) and headed for the bluff trail. My daypack held a water bottle, a folding saw, a shears and bear spray. Every year trail maintenance is required as there is always a dead pine or spruce across the trail.Each day, I cut brush or sawed through prostrate tree trunks if their girth was not too great for my little saw. For bigger tree trunks, I cut small sections and stack them in a sloping manner up and over the tree creating a ramp. In mountain biking parlance these are known as “features.”

Some demanding mountain bike trails have features that are narrow, almost rickety bridges crossing creeks, ravines or through boulder fields. Sometimes features are literally ramps that launch the cyclist up and over obstacles. I stay clear of trails that feature  jumps that propel my bush pony airborne.

Two days ago I turned 63 years old and bike jumps, boulder hopping and so on are no longer part of my repertoire. I’m hoping for at least another 20 years of mountain biking.

I digress. But the idea of features is important because to get to the river bluff trail requires us to ride just over a mile on gravel roads. If I followed an old game trail along the river, I could cut more than three quarters of a mile while providing some fun trail riding right next to the river. But to do so would require building a couple of features.

So with a pile of scrap 2 x 6s strewn in the grass, an idea was hatched. In minutes, the deck project was forgotten and I was grabbing a saw, hammer and nails.

The primary feature was a ramp that angled from our elevated yard down to the riverside trail. It required two sections to complete the ramp of about sixteen feet. As I built it, I began to wonder if I would actually dare, or that matter, actually attempt to descent the ramp on my bike. And how about pedaling up the ramp? Would that be easier?

For an hour I cut, hammered, fit and adjusted the new scrappy highway.Tentatively, I shuffled onto the ramp and taking baby steps, eased down it. There was a noticeable sag in the span, so I added some structural rounds of firewood beneath the ramp to firm it up. It worked.

With the sun shining today, it would be a perfect day to christen the ramp with a bike ride but in the two days since the completion of the project, we have had lots of rain. And rain accelerates the snowmelt from the high country. And all that water funnels via  freshets and creeks into the Watson River as it passes our Outpost.

The Watson has risen higher than I have ever seen it. It is moving past at a scary clip. Every so often Nancy and I watch nervously as a tree or stump floats by. Our river deck is completely submerged and I don’t know if it can withstand this kind of constant pounding.

There is no longer any bike trail visible along the river and the surging water level is approaching my lumber scrap ramp. I will likely have to try and pull the two sections out before they become floating features.

In the meantime, my face bears worried features of concern as I impatiently await the passing of the river’s crest. Only then will I be able to contemplate getting back to work on resurrecting the bike trail and the ramp that stole me from chores.

Hmmmm. You know with a little adjustment, the ramp could turn into a kayak slide.

I’ve just walked down from a morning stroll up to the little summit of “Pulpit Hill.” There, under a canvas of a vivid Yukon blue sky, I quietly reflected on the recent road trip up here from Minnesota.

Initially our Minnesota departure was delayed by a full week. After a wet spring, wepulled away from our verdant Basecamp.   The population explosion of mosquitoes was likely sad to see their hosts light out for the Territories.

The first day we managed to put in 26 miles. No, we were not driving a team of oxen and a Conestoga wagon. We stopped at Nancy’s parents and spent two nights with them. Both of them are closer to ninety than eighty and both had been dealing with  health issues. Her mom, Winnie, was nursing a broken wrist and having a cast made life difficult. Then, while we were there, an infected ankle showed up and that added to the care focus. Nancy’s dad, Dave, is nursing a very sore back that makes it difficult to stand up.

After two days of helping and visiting, we headed west on I-94. We had gone about 100 miles when Nancy began to cry. She was thinking of her parents and realized that she wanted to stay a while longer to help.  I said no problem so we turned around and headed back. The Yukon Outpost was empty and sitting idle in spring is not a big deal.

Just over a week later, we headed out again. This time we got twenty miles before Nancy realized that she had not packed her clothes bag into the truck.

There was no third feint in our Yukon trek as we finally passed into North Dakota. We eventually made our way just west of Minot and felt the need to stop for something to eat.

We stopped at a roadside joint in Foxholm, North Dakota. We had no choice and both of us wished we had stopped earlier in Minot. Not only was the food limited in choices, but also it was also poor and expensive. (At trip’s end  we jointly declare it “worst meal” of he road trip.

With the sun approaching day’s end, and no campgrounds nearby, we scored a guerrilla camping spot shortly after leaving Foxholm. I spied a big pile of gravel in a scoured pit north of the highway and we took a rarely traveled township road to reach it. We pulled our truck around to the backside of the pile and called it home.

Before crawling into our comfy berths under the truck topper, made softer by the recent acquisition of a 3-inch memory foam mattress topper, we took a short walk to move our bodies. With binoculars in hand we headed uphill out of the small river valley, with grasslands flanking both sides.

With each trip to the Yukon we keep a bird list tally. It helps pass the time and it offers a challenge to see if we can beat the previous year’s total.  Our goal was to tally 80 bird species.

As we strolled uphill with curious beef cattle eyeing us like newfound toys, I heard a trio of birds that came to the high water birding mark for the entire 2,700-mile trip. First was the melodious, buoyant, sweet song of a western meadowlark.

The meadowlark’s song was a regular occurrence when I was a kid. Now, five decades later, I haven’t heard their notes near my home grounds for a long, long time.  Meadowlarks require grasslands for their preferred habitat. In east-central Minnesota housing developments and converted grasslands for the unsustainable cycle of soybeans and corn has pretty much erased meadowlarks in the region.

According to the North American Breeding Bird Survey, breeding populations of meadowlarks have been declining in North America at a rate of approximately 1 percent per year since 1966. The result is a loss of about 36 percent of meadowlarks.

The North Dakota meadowlark we listened to was just finishing its choral performance when from high overhead I heard the distinct, almost haunting wavering notes of a male Wilson’s snipe. The winnowing sound is not a vocalization but is created from the snipe’s  fanned outer tail feathers as he zigzags high overhead.

Snipe prefer wetlands and I have a profound memory of being duped into going on a snipe hunt one dark night at a Boy Scout Jamboree. With gunny sacks our group of Tenderfoots was instructed to head into the snipes preferred haunts, a swamp or marsh, and to call out, not too loud and not too soft,  “Here snipe, here snipe.” Armed with empty gunnysacks we were told that these long-beaked, squat birds could be coaxed into our sacks.

After an hour or stumbling and splashing in the wetland we returned wet-footed and panted to the campfire where we humbly realized that we were the ones who had been caught . . . in a practical joke.

Hearing the meadowlark and the snipe simultaneously was a gift in itself, but when the third member of the evening trio chimed in, I was nearly brought to my knees. Descending over the grasslands uphill of us, advanced a loud and and declarative upland sandpiper with its long yellow legs trailing behind it.

The bubbling flight call is distinctive and rarely heard call in Minnesota. This 12 inch tall, grassland sandpiper was once a sought after delicacy and hunted to unsustainable levels for its meat. The real culprit in its alarming population decline is the loss of native prairie habitat. Like the meadowlark it requires diverse grasslands.

I suspect my love for this bird stems in large part, from the fine essay that the late Aldo Leopold wrote that is included in his compilation of writings in his classic A Sound County Almanac.

 “When dandelions have set the mark of May in Wisconsin pastures, it is time to listen for the final proof of spring. Sit down on a tussock, cock your ears at the sky, dial out the bedlam of meadowlarks and redwings and soon you may hear it; the flight-song of the upland plover, just now back from the Argentine.”

In my lifetime,  the American Ornithological Union decided that this bird was not a true plover but instead a sandpiper and hence the official name change to “upland sandpiper.”

 After minutes of watching and listening to the evening vespers of these three birds, we turned back and descended to our hideout behind the house-sized mound of gravel. The sun melted into the western horizon and a lone coyote barked an exclamation mark for day’s end.

It was nice to be on the road again and sleep came easily.

Oh and our final tally was exactly 80 species with three of those being most memorable.

Profiling or labeling is one of the great embarrassments of being human.

Sadly, we not only profile individuals based on how they look, eat or believe,  I see we have stooped so low as to unfairly judge hungry wildlife.  And why not? Of all species on the planet, humans are not only the most judgmental but the sloppiest as well.

A recent piece was published in a local newspaper about a hungry black bear wandering into the nearby city limits of  Cambridge, Minnesota. It did not end well for the bear.

First some background. Bruins learn that we two-leggeds have a keen propensity to be messy with food. Why wouldn’t a winter hungry bear roam into a neighborhood following the promising smells coming from open garbage cans, torn garbage bags, open compost bins topped with yesterday’s leftovers, BBQ grills soaked in bratwurst and burger fat.

Bears are wise in avoiding humans. But once in a while they get used to us. Such a bear is called a habituated bear.  They learn to ignore folks and basically become unafraid of humans. But that doesn’t mean that we become unafraid of them.  Most folks have a deep-rooted fear over large mammals with sharp teeth and claws. They are convinced that the bear will kill them.

Ignorance goes along way in delivering a fear package. Black bears are expert omnivores. They eat alot of plant and alot of protein. But note that much of their protein is garnered from insects such as ant eggs and larvae. Every spring I watch black bears unabashedly slaughter heaps of dandelion blossoms as they graze roadside ditches near our Outpost in the Yukon Territory.

For the record, I am an avid hunter. However, I’ve never been drawn to the idea of shooting a bear because I don’t find it sporting to sit over a pile of greasy and sweet bait foods to wait for a bear.

What if the recently executed Cambridge bear had been visiting such a bait station last fall and managed to avoid getting shot? Now spring comes along and it smells all those delicious odors again. Hurrah easy picking calories just down the street!

Getting into improperly stored human “food” (trash, etc) even just once can start a bear down the path of securing the title “habituated.”It’s far too easy to label such a bear as a nuisance bear. It makes it easy to justify its removal.

In reading the recent short story titled, “Nuisance bear spotted in Cambridge,” the end of the first paragraph states that the bear was “taken care of.”  Usually when something is “taken care of” it means that efforts are made without causing damage. Come on, don’t try and sanitize the act. Be bold, just say up front that the bear was executed for following its nose to our mess.

By labeling a bear as a “nuisance” we can easily justify its removal. We humans are good at that. If the paper had run a title such as, “Beautiful black bear murdered in Cambridge,” I suspect just as many readers would have read it. Its another perspective that is just as accurate as the one printed.

Given that bears, raccoons, skunks, crows and other critters that love our overflowing bird feeders, sloppiness and garbage were here first, should we not consider who the real nuisance is? In all fairness, the paper did go on to give good instructions of the need to keep your premises clean of food temptations for wandering bears.

All I ask is for us to take responsibility for the death of a bear that was looking for an easy meal. You know, kind of like when we dash to a fast food joint for a quick and easy meal.

This is a case where we have met the nuisance and it is us.

Fate would have it that the old brass bed, the same one that my great grandfather slept in, would align with our bedroom window so well.

With the second story window opening next to my supine self, there is maybe an inch between the top of the mattress and the windowsill. On recent nights, I’ve tucked  the familiar dried piece of birch sapling in place to hold the double hung window open.  Our house  is over a century old and the inconvenience of blocking a window opening is almost pleasing. With the window “locked” open I can push my pillow onto the window sill and practically  lay my head outdoors. It is the closest thing to camping while sleeping in my home.

Walt Whitman, one of America’s most beloved poets, urges us in the lines of Songs of the Open Road to live robust lives and “inhale great drafts of air.”

In sleeping nightly, almost in the oak canopy just outside the window, I am following his advice as dictated in his highly touted poem,  Leaves of Grass.

“Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.”

It is said that sleeping outdoors strengthens one’s immune system and improves overall physical vigor and endurance. An additional benefit is found among the nocturnal sounds. Buzzing and chirping insects, rustling leaves or sighing winds through pine boughs create a soothing white noise that lullabye asleep.

Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish scientist, often dubbed the “father of botany,” flung open his family’s house windows in the summer to simply hear bird and insect song.

But that wasn’t enough. Linnaeus so loved the male cricket’s courting stridulations that he even secretly released live crickets into their Uppsala home. These courting songs produced only by the male crickets did little to excite his wife, Sara. She was not pleased with the housebound crickets and did her best to rid the household of them. When the house cricket music lessened, Carl quietly found more replacements.

Another fellow Scandinavian, Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundson loved the practice of open windows. He was a giant in polar exploration and was the first human to reach the South Pole and the first to fly successfully over the North Pole.

His open window sleeps were not seasonal. As a means of acclimating himself to cold weather, he also allowed the Norwegian winter night into his bedroom.

While lying in our bed, spirited by fresh air,  I am privileged to experience the blessed duality of my mate snuggled next to me and to sleepily peer out the window at an emerging spring morning. My gaze takes me directly into the craggy branches of a dear bur oak that I have christened the “home place oak.”

In the bold annual act of pushing open the window, I am declaring winter’s end. Some years, like this I clearly rushed the issue and I had to pull the birch out and set it aside for another week or more.  Recent chilly nights have both not  freshened our sleep but also prolonged the need for the down comforter. And I am assured more snuggling.

Usually the first grand window openings are in April. It is then that I bear witness to the sassiness of courting crows and even the occasional guttural croak of neighborhood ravens. Ravens have steadily become a newer fixture in our parts and I am partial to their corvid calls.

By mid-April, I am assured of being awakened prior to sunrise when the roosting male turkeys gobble their dominance to other males and more importantly, their readiness to put on the strut for the hen turkeys.

Call it cruel, but I love having a morning chat with the gobblers. I sometimes keep my mouth turkey call on the windowsill. After I’m awakened by a distant gobble, I can slip the call into my mouth and either gives him a challenging gobble or a seductive hen cluck.

The first time I did this, I learned that it is to my advantage to awaken and warn Miss Nancy of my turkey talk. To do otherwise, threatens the snuggling part I mentioned.

In May, I get to witness the amazing daily transformation of opening oak leaves. My favorite view is early spring when the all the trees within view of my bed, wear a different shade of green. Most are muted and soft. By the time we hit June, the colors all blend to a sameness of dark green.

But it is when the tiny bundles of new bur oak leaves emerge that I await the tassels of butter-colored, catkins. Even at this stage the tiny oak leaves are easily recognizable as bur. Unlike other local oaks, the top of the bur oak leaf throughout it’s growth is . . .well burly. It has the look of broad shoulders. Like the white oak the lobes of the leaf are rounded. But the white oak does not share the broad shoulder and tapered profile of a bur.

Before things leaf out much, early dawns become noisier with bird song. I find I wake up more fully when I hear the slurry, robin like call of a rose breasted grosbeak that perches only feet away.

Pillow birding is an amazing sport. Without lifting my head, I have simultaneously spied four species of warblers from the home place oak. The breaking sunshine illuminated each of them. All bore the colors of a painter’s pallet.  Less than four bed lengths from me was a Blackburnian warbler, a Chestnut-sided warbler, an American redstart and a yellow warbler. It was so newsworthy that I dared disturb Miss Nancy’s sleep. I nudged her foot with mine and  excitedly hissed the discovery of newfound colors in the home place oak.

These are indeed the secrets of making the best persons.

Now and only now can I unequivocally declare that spring has settled.

For some this fair season is declared when they hear the peal of the first spring peepers, for many it’s the clear notes of a robin and for others it might be the clamor of Canada geese. But this year, each of those harbingers was derailed by another dump of snow.

Yesterday morning I was washing the outside of the dining area windows when I heard the ecstatic pronouncement of spring back in the woods behind me. A male ovenbird was repeating his jubilant sounding phrases that are easily memorized if you think of them repeating the words, “teacher-teacher-teacher.”

Ovenbirds belong to a group of colorful, small birds known as woods warblers. Naturalists and biologists often refer to this group of birds as “neotropical migrants.” This group of small migrants spends the winter in a tropical destination and nest in northerly non-tropical settings.

The ovenbird I was listening to had just arrived, likely the night before, riding the steady south wind.  After spending weeks on a precarious migration from its wintering grounds in Central America and northern Venezuela, this singing territorial male sounded tireless.

I have a special fondness for ovenbirds because of an intimate relationship with one particular male. I first met him on May 30^th sometime in the mid-1990s. He had flown into the nearly invisible mist net that we had set up in the woods to capture songbirds so we could band them.

After carefully removing him from the tangled, fine net mesh, I tucked him in a small cloth bag and brought him to the table where we could process him. Process means to try and determine his age, sex, note the date, and then fit him with his tiny aluminum band and record the unique 8 or 9 digit number that gives this bird a one-of-a-kind identity. The bird is not kept captive long and is quickly released after processing it.

For over 100 years biologist have been banding birds with lightweight bands.  Bands range in size from those that resemble wide finger rings that are used in banding large birds like eagles and large waterfowl or tiny fragments of foil that are used for affixing to the wire like leg of a hummingbird. Each band has a unique 8 or 9 digit number along with an inscription that says CALL 1-800-327 BAND and WWW.REPORTBAND.GOV . Obtaining a federal permit is not easy and requires many skills and a mess of paperwork.

Of the many, many birds I’ve banded I honestly think I gave nearly all of them a subliminal “good luck” as I released them.

It’s pretty special to catch a bird that has been previously banded. But when I caught this same fellow the following year, on May 29^th in the very same mist net location it was like a happy reunion.

Songbirds are very lucky to survive to adulthood; most die before they are a year old. They are exceptionally lucky to make a long-distance round trip migration. In the case of my little ovenbird friend, he had likely flown over 6,000 miles just in its fall and spring migration!

Having caught my new found ovenbird friend twice, he had now logged over 12,000 miles on just his migrant flights.

The next year I didn’t catch him. It turned out he eluded the net because the fourth year I caught him again! It was May 30^th and yes, in the same net!

Feeling in the presence of a true Olympic champion, I was humbled at his timeliness and durability.

While I think I have a pretty good sense of direction when in the woods, mine pales in comparison to these songbirds when it comes to homing in to an exact spot. Their ability to hone in to an exact place makes the most expensive of GPS units look like junk. It amazes me to think that this little bird, weighing only a few grams, found its way into the same net, at the same swath in the woods on nearly the same date for three years.

I didn’t mourn the fact that I never caught him again because he had already outperformed the odds. And somehow I like to think the bird I heard the other day is genetically tied to my special little friend.

To listen to the song and learn more about ovenbirds and to listen to their song, click on to the link for the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. It’s a great resource.

Happy spring.

Song: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/ovenbird/id

A week ago I was still wading in snow. Nine days ago, we had been hit with a spring snowfall of 20 inches.

Today there are only a few snowballs worth of snow lurking in the shade. With the yard exposed,  I was cleaning up one of our wood sheds so we could stack a new load of split black cherry.

The tall tree had to be dropped as it was beginning to lean perilously towards our garage. So as disciples of the precautionary principle, we decided it had to come down while we had the ability to control its fall. It was thick of girth but the main trunk had a permanent wriggle to the sky so there was no straight log to salvage for lumber. Now the tree lies in a pile of split chunks awaiting their next home neatly stacked in our wood shed. There they will dry a year or two before we render the hardwood to BTUs in our kitchen woodburning stove.

Tidying up the woodshed is only one of the many jobs of sprucing up for spring .With the blanket of snow finally gone, this is the season where many of our embarrassments are revealed.

“Oh that’s where I left the rake last October.” And, I wondered where that extension chord had gone after I used it to deliver power to the Christmas lights in our snow cave.

I am not alone in my onerous task of seeking a spiffy spring. There is a male bluebird that is checking out the bluebird house I put up on the deer fence around our humble orchard. And the predictable phoebes are back swooping the yard’s perimeter, rising and lowering their tails as if in a slow motion wag at the arrival of another spring.

I called a time out and went to sit on the porch steps. As I sat there I noticed a wooly bear caterpillar slowly undulating its way towards the steps. This soon to be an Isabella moth,  seemed in a hurry. It was moving about a foot per minute.

Perhaps there is a distinct sensation of change in the insect’s innards.  This little bristly caterpillar will soon change its identity. Something will signal that this is enough undulating and it wall stop and pupate.

After it emerges from its pupa casing, it is a moth. But even then it’s not finished it has only a short time to find a mate to share genetic material and start the whole seasonal cycle over again.

I wondered where it had spent the winter. Perhaps under the leaves that had blown into the wood shed. Or maybe tucked under the loose bark of a piece of red oak. Silently it moves on with things. It could have cared less about the length or breadth of winter.

Deliberately, but oh so slowly, the caterpillar approached our sidewalk. Would it cross the walk and climb our four steps?  I chuckled. It was as if the little bristle brush of a critter was reminding me of a long forgotten joke.

 So this guy is lying on the couch watching TV. There is a knock at the door so he gets up, walks to the door and opens it. No one is there.

 He looks down and there on the landing is a small snail. The guy bends down and picks it up. He momentarily looks it over and then flicks it with his finger out into the yard.

 Several  months later, the guys is once again watching his favorite show from his couch. The door knocks. He grumbles as he gets up to open the door. No one there. He looks down and there is a little snail.

 He bends down to pick it up but is met with an angry outburst from the snail.  

  “What the hell was that for?”

 The joke gives new meaning to slow. This is an attribute that most humans fail to grasp. Instead we multi-task, give kudos to those who seem to get so much done. We thrive on stress.

We could all stand to slow down a bit and not take life so seriously.

Tomorrow I’m going to practice slow when I walk through the predawn darkness to a spot in the woods. I will sit myself down with a thick tree for a backrest.  My job will be to remain motionless and pretend to be the tree trunk. I will tuck a call in my mouth and yelp, cut, cluck and purr, like a love struck hen turkey. And if a strutting gobbler turkey is fooled and makes its way towards me. It will be my job to breathe deeply. Slow down the racing heart and make a quick killing shot to garner a slow, humble feast.

Shell-shocked, I had shoveled another snowstorm off our sidewalk. This was a tardy April fool’s joke; winter’s nasty way of grinding its frozen heel into our tender spring hopes.

Overhead, I heard the guttural greeting of a raven. I took it as an uplifting message of Poe’s often quoted line:”Nevermore.”

Twenty four hours later, the sun has claimed the sky and is bearing down with a vengeance. Water is dripping and settling everywhere. I stepped outside to see if this was a cruel mirage. There were no raven calls today. Instead I grew a smile when I heard a pair of clamoring sandhill cranes to the south, back by the slough.

Muskrat houses there still resemble small  white igloos locked in the pond’s winter ice. I wonder if the quarantined muskrats rejoice in the rhythm of “drip, drip, drip.” And I hope from inside their walls of mud and plant stems they hear the ancient clarion calls of the cranes.

The first cranes heard in the spring stop me with greater power than the first slurry notes of a bluebird. It’s not the crane’s melody but their bold raucousness.  Hearing a single crane carries more hope than a grade school valentine. The prehistoric sounding outburst is the Taps of winters demise.

I am heartened that the promise of spring flows in the hormones of these birds. Blending their bugling with their pair bonding, high-stepping dance, males and females forge their connection.  They never miss the annual April dance.

According to biologists, these east-central Minnesota cranes winter in northern and central Florida. I would dance too knowing I am escaping not only the made-up vision of Disneyworld but also the insipid humidity of a spring and summer in Florida.

Over the past fifteen or so years cranes have established themselves firmly in our neighborhood. In August we get to watch the gangly crane colts walk stiffly with their parents over the rye stubble looking for food.

I’m getting ahead of myself with this summer talk. General Winter is taking severe losses today and I need to be in the present and celebrate.

Was the raven’s prophecy of “nevermore,” an assurance that there will be no more snow shoveling?  While I have put away the big snow scoop today, I am not hedging any bets. One snow shovel remains basking nearby in the sunlit wood shed.

Last week, I slid onto the bench behind the table at the evening Township Annual Meeting next to one of the Town Supervisors.

Looking out over the thirty-plus rural folks attending, I said, “Wow,” I said, “This is a good crowd.”

He nodded and lamented, “I wish we could get a third of this attendance at the monthly meetings. Folks should know they get to practice local government more than once a year.”

The meeting was called to order, we rose and with hands over hearts said the Pledge of Allegiance and a moderator was nominated, seconded and approved. The previous year’s annual meeting minutes read followed by the treasurer’s report.

We listened to appeals from representatives of various non-profits requesting continued support at equal or even with a slight increase. Most were approved. Most creative was the appeal made by the local 4-H group. By this time, over an hour had passed, and the young girl who was going to assist her 4-H leader and mother, in making the presentation was snoring as she slept sprawled across her father’s lap. The leader asked for a donation and promised that with the gift, the local group of young people would return to the town hall in the spring and give it a good cleaning. We voters could not resist the offer?

The discussion shifted to the role of the township in helping non-profits out with money. One middle-aged man wondered, “If the county is already contributing aren’t we paying twice? Is it the role of the township to subsidize these groups?”

A healthy, short discussion was had and it is clear that this issue will likely be brought up early in next year’s meeting Two primary agenda items were next: Fire District and Acquisition of County Parkland.

The Fire District issue is a hot (sorry) potato as it is an expensive line item in the township budget. A motion was made and passed to form a committee to look closely at the options and then report back to the township with recommendations.

But it was the discussion of increasing Anderson County Park acreage with the purchase of two willing sellers that touched the nerve of most of the back row of the meeting.

“Now we want to take more land off the tax roles?” barked one man.

This was followed by an almost orchestrated row of sneers and head nods.

That was the cue my Lovely Lady, my wife, Nancy, was waiting for.

She raised her hand and proceeded to deliver points about the ecological services wild lands provide to all of us at no cost to us. Calmly she added, “These ecological services, like clean water and air, provide far more to us than the burden of additional residential growth. Research has repeatedly shown that residential growth does not pay for itself unless the homes are million dollar plus homes.”

Our township sits in a big bed of sand, courtesy of the outwash plains from the last glacial melting some 12,000 years ago. This region is a valuable water filter and water storage area with the many wetlands and lakes found here. Much of this water filters down and recharges the Mt. Simon Aquifer; the same aquifer that provides fresh water to the northern Twin Cities Region.

Another man, a friend who lets us pick cranberries on his lakeshore property, asked a question that drew looks of momentary puzzlement.

“I’m concerned about the New Americans that will come out here. Why I can’t even get out on the fishing pier up by Mora without being forced off by their numbers.”

There was a moment of silence and I detected several accommodating nods from the back row.

In an instant it was clear that the shadow of fear had pushed its way into the back row as well.

A retired woman sitting directly in front of the scorned fisherman turned and asked, “What do you mean. . . New Americans?”

“Well,” he replied with a smile, “They sure aren’t Swedes and Norwegians.” This got a back row laugh.

I remembered stories of how early immigrants to America coming from Scandinavia, Ireland and elsewhere were scorned.

Another woman, a former librarian declared, “Well I’m not afraid of new folks coming out to enjoy the park. After all, it is there for the public good.”

I was glad that the moderator sensed the energy shift in the room. So in order to minimize conflict he called for a vote on the motion.

“All in favor for the township to contribute $15,000 to be used as matching funds for a grant request for Anderson park land say “aye”.”

“AYE!”

“Opposed.”

“NAY”

It was too close to call so the moderator called for a show of hands.

“Nineteen to seventeen. The ayes win. The motion is passed.”

Although I was relieved, I wasn’t jubilant. Frankly I wanted to get out of there. It felt uncomfortable.

Now a week later, I am more committed than ever in saving wild lands.

Whether we like it or not the face of America is changing. The face of Minnesota is changing. Within ten years it is projected that the white population of America will go from being a majority to a minority. Nothing we can do about it nor is there anything we should do about it.

Change is inevitable and change can be scary. For some folks it is real scary. Some day soon, the vanilla face of this Township Meeting will change. Stay tuned.

If we do not encourage today’s minorities and immigrants  from engaging intimately in national, state, and even county parks, there is a greater likelihood that those areas will not be safeguarded. We have to create moments when people can fall in love with these remnants of wild lands. When you love something you will go to great lengths to care and protect it.

The irony is that we will only be protecting those systems that make it possible for us to live.

 “America has changed me, and I and hundreds of thousands like me dramatically changing America.”

-Novelist Sharati Mukherjee

I love wild places.

It’s altogether too easy to say one loves anything.  I fear such idle pronouncements diminish the real authenticity and power of love. Perhaps  the descriptor “love” has become as trite as describing something as “awesome” or “epic.” Words, like footwear, can be faddish. So let me try again.

I love wild places. No, I mean really love wild places. And while I stand in awe of rugged landscapes, it is the soft, sensual landscapes that most arrest my gaze. I wonder what role the Greek god, Eros, plays in my steadfast need for wild places?  As humans we are undeniably sexual beings. Capitalists have long known the secret that sex sells. If you don’t wash your hair with “Shampoo X” then you are made to feel unattractive and even unsexy. But use “Shampoo X” and you will be awash in mate-attracting pheromones.

I often wonder how is it that the raw and naked wildness of the natural world can arouse my senses and brings me pleasure as no mortal lover can? In my heated love for the land around my home, I  confess to numerous love affairs. Some are one-time trysts and others are relationships that I have carefully nurtured for years.  Short, but heated exotic and foreign relationships serve to add fire to the passion and commitment to protect and nurture the familiar homescape.

We live in a culture that is often in dilemma about the conflict of sex and beauty. If a mutually agreeable sex act is excellent and enhances the love between two individuals it is said to be beautiful. However, the message we often receive is that sex is something that we must only whisper about, rather than celebrate. How can we find peace in our knowing if we are taught conflicting messages that one  is “dirty” and  the other is a sacred and lovely act.

I believe there is an innate tension between an honest-to-goodness feeling of arousal in wild places  and our need to suppress that nature. If we succumb to the erotic, I believe can forge an intimate relationship with it.

We are motivated to change or act when something affects us personally. It might be a health issue or the change is inspired by the girth, or lack of it, of your wallet. I would argue there is a third powerful motivator to change. That catalyst would be “heart surge”  or an actual physical uplift when in the company of a favorite person or place. There is an undeniable jolt of pleasurable arousal.

When we awaken that arousal in ourselves we are fed the sticky syrups that anchor us in relationship. Think of how many times you might have been rendered mute when confronting a magical, still moment in the outdoors.  Perhaps it was a moment when the sun dipped into west horizon and offered us one last glowing moment of the day. Or maybe it’s the first light of day that caresses your skin in a subtle warm wash. Vistas, particularly from hills and mountains, have always inspired heart surges.  These moments are best described in the words of novelist, A. B. Guthrie, “that we really ain’t such a somebody.”

It’s a good thing to be humbled by the power and affections of the natural world. Visual amazements, heady blossom perfumes, essences of cedar and spruce, the tartness of a wood sorrel leaf on the tongue or the coolness of a soft day when earthbound clouds surround us with their mist can forge unforgettable foreplay.

I want to touch, to get “dirty” with the land. There is something so honest, innocent and playful about a child or worker who is smeared and smudged with banners of dirt. I would rather engage with the banker who wears a thin crescent of dirt under their fingernails than the one wearing flawless and smoothed fingertips.

Think about it, the best sex is when one surrenders to the moment losing all control. We are a species that has a difficult time in surrendering control and letting go.  Perhaps I find a surge in sexual energy when in wild places because in such places there is no control. It is sheer wildness.   Eros is a mentor in helping me connect intimately to wild places.  The more dissociated I am with natural communities, the more I feel the wellsprings of my passions seeping away.

Just as we are genetically coded to have wild places in our lives, I believe there is an erotic calling for wildness in each and every one of us. Wide-eyed amazement at a moment of a new and astonishing discovery is unforgettable.  My creed for loving wild places is to surrender to wonder.

Certainly there are ethical and moral rules around sex, but imagine if we looked at the natural world with the same intensity as we do a remembered love?

On our drive north the sky transitioned from blue to the murkiness of dusk. The landscape of birch, spruce, pine and alder lost its detail. Yard lights illuminated the occasional house but mostly we passed boreal black.

The smell of a cooling  pizza, bought an hour earlier in Grand Rapids, was only faint now. It was slated to be  the following day’s lunch for a snowshoe trek.

We finally approached the small community of Northome, population 199, which is located just east of the massive Upper and Lower Red Lake. Up ahead, I spotted the small, isolated motel with an infinite wild backyard. We eased into tracked  parking lot. The snow had not been plowed and by the looks of the tire marks in the snow. Easing the truck  into the nose of  a snowdrift, I was glad we had driven our four-wheel drive Toyota Tundra, known fondly in our household as “Big Ass.” It’s really not such a big truck, but compared to our 10 year-old Prius, which we fondly call “Sipper” (sips gas), the truck is a big ass.

The porch where the Office entry was located was crowded with stored bicycles of various colors, a battery charger, coils of electrical cords and a winter-retired gas grill. While the place might have looked deserted or a little ominous like the famed Bates Motel in the Hitchcock classic thriller, Psycho, its owner, Mike, dispelled any moments of creepiness. His loquacious and pleasing manner was a relief.

“My Bobcat is broken down so I can’t clean up the parking area very well,” he explained.

As he registered us to a small but tidy room we made small talk. He wondered if we were going ice fishing over on Red Lake. “No,” I answered and then hesitated to admit, “we’re going snowshoeing up into the Red Lake Peatlands.” I noted the slight raise of Mike’s eyebrows. With a polite sneer, he said, “Well we don’t see many snowshoers. . . mostly ice fishing folks and snowmobilers.” Tearing my receipt from his book and handing it to me he queried, “Are you going to look for the Sasquillions?” Momentarily puzzled , I saw the twinkle in his eye and somehow quickly deduced that he was referring to a family unit of Sasquatch or Yetis. With an equally polite sneer, I answered, “That’s my hope. And one good photo . . . and move over Bill Gates!”

“Well, have a good night’s sleep,” he said as he handed me the room key. “And good luck up in the big bog!”

This Yeti fascination is a North American phenomenon. However, I suspect every culture has their bogie man that roams the wilds and is super shy of human encounters. But the fact that it is there adds to the mystique and dread of exploring wild, dark places. While Mike might have joked about our looking for the Sasquillions, some folks shudder at the thought of such critters.

We have a burly neighbor, up at our Yukon Territory Outpost, who is generally a nice guy but he can be brusque, mean, and isolated. One night he and his family of four kids and his wife had stopped by for an impromptu visit. We were just sitting down to eat a late supper. We explained that we had been out for almost 12 hours on a mountain biking exploration on an old mining exploratory road known to locals as the Alligator Lake Road. There are no gators or for that matter no reptiles in the Yukon and only a handful of amphibians. The lake, shaped like an alligator head, is in the midst of some very remote country.

Burly Neighbor looked startled upon learning where we had gone. “You went to Alligator Lake!?  Are you f—–g nuts!” Nancy and my vacant, puzzled looks only fueled more expletives that I would be hard pressed to use in front of manly miners. “Don’t you know there is a Yeti that lives back there?!” And just to be sure we understood he heaped even more searing expletives while his family looked as calm as a Sunday picnic. I wanted to calmly respond, “Cool,” but my ancient reptilian brain would not allow such an answer. Survival was paramount.

Ten minutes later, the conversation was successfully steered towards more urban matters and my digestion resumed. Less than two weeks later, I was talking with three of Burly Neighbor’s  oldest kids and they asked, “Tom do you believe in Yetis?”

“Well,” I enthused, “I hope they exist because I thing it would be really cool to see one.” That was not the answer they expected but I like to think that hearing a positive response might give them another perspective.

So now here we were again facing the ever-elusive phantom Yeti. The next morning we left the Northome Motel with fresh snow falling in the predawn blackness. In less than an hour we would be at the edges of both the Big Bog and the imagination. With luck, we would come across the Sasquillions and get a family portrait.